


no need to lie no more

by dragonism



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:02:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21760306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonism/pseuds/dragonism
Summary: Ana:What are you going to do when the fighting's over, Jack?Soldier: 76:I'm a soldier, Ana, retirement doesn't suit me.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Kudos: 3





	no need to lie no more

they are two tired old men now, acting out the millennia-old script of violence, brother-against-brother. cain & abel, beating bruises and blood out of their leathered skin, waiting to see who’ll crumple first. 

to be honest, it’s not like it’s a fair fight. it never is. gabriel is something more?less? than human, beyond the limits of what a man can do. jack wryly thinks _ archangel_, even if he moves like a shade and hunts like a demon. gabe is beyond mortal now, and he dies and is reborn in every disintegrating second, the sweep of a monstrous cloud. jack has not changed, perhaps, besides becoming a little bit blinder, a little bit older, a little bit slower. the visor corrects and covers for his mistakes, but at the end of the day - he’s merely human, even if they used to call him _ soldier _ then _ supersoldier_, _ candidate #76 _ to _ commander_, _ war hero_, _ legend_. he vomits out these tarnished, gaudy titles. everything is tarnished in the wake of the bombs. most days he feels hollow inside, merely something to be turned inside out and torn apart. jack’s once-guardian angel has turned against him, and now - they hunt each other through the darkness, through the daylight, an ouroboros of pain and hate and loathing. every step is just enough to make the other bleed a little more, writhe a little more in the choking death grip of their shared history. they will never know peace until one or both of them is dead, and as jack has the sneaking suspicion it’s suddenly become much harder for gabe to die, well. it’s a good thing he’s already dead, in the eyes of the world - the end will simply be an exorcism, a ghost finally uprooted.

truthfully, he doesn’t want to live.

truthfully, he doesn’t want to live like this.

truthfully, he doesn’t know how to live with himself, this leftover revenant of war-won glory and old hurts.

when the overwatch call comes, for the following week, he considers throwing himself into the sea to drown.

he can’t lead. he _ can’t_. but he has a duty - a responsibility - perhaps, even, in his wounded bleeding heart, fresh from a scrap with gabe - sweet, monstrous gabriel - perhaps he even has a love, a softness, a tenderness for this thing he helped build from the ground up. so he’ll go back, like an old hunting hound called home. he’ll take up old mantles, halfway, here and there, helping - but he won’t _ command_, again. ghosts aren’t meant to come back to life. he won’t tear open scarred-over wounds with the little time he has before he goes. he’ll go see what has become of his heartchild, his lungs, the slippery ropes of his intestines, trailing out behind him. maybe he can die with an intact body instead of the pieced-together mess from the bombing. in the end it always comes back to his blackened past. still, that’s not too much to ask, maybe, if someone else put out the calls to arms, someone who’s _ not-jack_. 

when the black-jawed bite of death tears open his throat, as it will, inevitably, inexorably, jack knows - jack dares to hope that even without him, without gabriel, a new, better overwatch will live on, without any need to be haunted by the shades of the past. an old man can hardly help dreaming.

**Author's Note:**

> i am literally writing this instead of writing my essays for finals  
also i havent played overwatch in forever and i dont know all the canon lore, not that overwatch has much anyways, so this is just me speculating  
fuck blizzard & #FreeHongKong


End file.
